


Fallen leaves can be picked up by the shovelful

by dearericbittle (dutchmoxie)



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, Alternate Universe - Different First Meeting, Banter, Fluff, Laura Hale Lives, M/M, Magical Stiles Stilinski, Roommates
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-11
Updated: 2020-10-11
Packaged: 2021-03-07 22:55:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,491
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26955445
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dutchmoxie/pseuds/dearericbittle
Summary: Stiles has been working so hard to keep his magic a secret from his roommate, and it’s worked pretty well for the first month or so. And then he can’t resist playing around in the leaves and well… Apparently he’s been sharing a room with a werewolf? Suddenly this Emissary thing he’s heard about makes a lot more sense.
Relationships: Derek Hale/Stiles Stilinski
Comments: 59
Kudos: 875
Collections: A Very Sterek Fall 2020





	Fallen leaves can be picked up by the shovelful

**Author's Note:**

  * For [fairydustedtheory](https://archiveofourown.org/users/fairydustedtheory/gifts).



> My second submission for A Very Sterek Fall - and the third for my prompt fest.   
> For my partner in crime fairydustedtheory, who requested College AU shenanigans with roommates, and then I saw she had meddling sisters in there as well and I couldn't resist adding that as well. #squadgoals

Stiles isn’t doing too bad on the roommate front this year. Not like freshman year, when he got the at least slightly homophobic Abercrombie & Fitch asshole who had a habit of sexiling Stiles without notice and playing his shitty techno music so loudly that it was audible even though the dick was wearing headphones. Stiles spent a lot of time on the common room couch. 

Derek Hale is better than Rick the Dick in a multitude of ways. He’s not homophobic in the slightest, having stickers of both the ace and the bi flags on his laptop - and Stiles has overheard him time and time again, painstakingly trying to explain demisexuality to the many, many people hitting on him (because somehow Stiles is around for that kind of thing a lot). And of course Derek doesn’t like shitty music and isn’t loud and never kicks Stiles out of their room, not even with proper warning. Stiles spends all his nights in his own bed these days. 

It’s just that Stiles thought he’d be out of the dorms by now. He thought he’d be living with friends, with pack, with roommates that he could trust to keep his secret. 

Instead he’s never quite at ease in the place that is supposed to be his home for the academic year, because there’s always Derek hovering in the back of his mind - or just on the other side of the room. Derek cares too much about homework and readings and the only people he seems to talk to are his two sisters - beautiful and intimidating and always laughing at him. 

At Derek. Though, they might laugh at Stiles too for all he knows. 

Still, the presence of Derek and occasionally of the rest of that terrifyingly attractive family makes it impossible for Stiles to work on his other homework. The kind that involves making pencils float and all that other Sparky nonsense. 

He needs to practice if he’s ever going to be the kind of cool Emissary (from what he’s heard that’s some kind of magical liaison who does research and magic and heck yeah) he wants to be - and he can’t practice with Derek just always being there. Stiles has thought about setting Derek up with someone (wouldn’t work because Derek seems utterly incapable of talking to people unless he’s awkwardly rejecting them) or bribing one or both of Derek’s sisters to take him somewhere (wouldn’t work because Stiles has yet to manage to get either Laura or Cora alone for more than half a second) so that Stiles can get some fucking privacy already. 

Not just for jerking off, this time. But for magical purposes. 

About midway through October - so it’s only been a month, it’s not like he’s known to be a particularly patient person - Stiles has had enough. The East Coast weather has been slowly turning into that hashtag fall aesthetic, but it’s not yet cold enough for Stiles to dread going outside - so if this is the only time he’s going to get, he might as well use it. 

“Leaves are easy,” Stiles mutters as he plops into the pile he so painstakingly gathered. 

Sure, he could have used fucking magic - no he’s still not over the relatively recent discovery that he has actual magical powers - but people would see. So instead he was stuck doing it by hand and getting all gross and sweaty. But he’s got a pretty solid pile now. 

A pile he can work on manipulating magically. 

“I believe,” he chants under his breath. “I believe you can fly.” 

At some point he’s going to have to learn to believe a bit more quietly, but at this stage in his magical development, using the actual words is totally fine. He’s been talking to this woman who claims to be something of an Emissary online and after she’d shared a whole bunch of her embarrassing mistakes, Stiles had felt a whole lot better about his inability to do more than briefly float a pencil. And now Julia’s kind of a mentor figure - from a distance. 

So that maybe Stiles will learn to progress from pencils and maybe a leaf or two. 

“I believe,” he continues to chant. “R Kelly style, even though he’s a creep.” 

It’s like the leaf he’s focusing on actually appreciates his dumb sense of humor, which is kind of awesome, because it slowly lifts itself out of his hand and into the air. It floats upwards until Stiles believes that it will stop, and then as Stiles continues to believe like he’s fucking Mulder, the leaf makes a careful loop de loop until it lands back in his hand. 

“Fuck yeah,” Stiles hums happily to himself. 

He tries to take stock of himself, trying to figure out if he has enough juice left to try it again and possibly on a greater scale. He feels fine - kind of hyped, actually - so he grabs two leaves this time, and tries to regain his focus. Adderall is not a cure all, after all. 

“I’m Mulder,” he tells both of the leaves. “I’m the believer.” 

These leaves listen to him as well, and it feels even easier than it did with the original leaf, and so Stiles tries to keep them in the air longer, maneuvering them carefully away from his perfect pile and teaching them dumb tricks that he would have taught a dog if he’d been allowed to have a pet. It’s not like he’s still bitter or anything. 

It’s when he tries to maneuver the leaves independently of each other that things get annoying - because his brain can’t seem to focus on both things at once and Stiles gets frustrated. 

Frustrated enough to sit up straight and glower at the leaves like they’re out to hurt him. 

“Stiles?” 

Well, fuck. That’s not good. 

It’s also Derek. His roommate Derek. Who has found Stiles sitting up in a pile of leaves, glaring at a couple of awkwardly trembling leaves floating in front of him. There probably isn’t any kind of viable explanation for this. Which means that this is going to suck. 

“That’s really impressive,” Derek tells him. 

Stiles is really hoping that Derek is talking about the truly impressive pile of leaves that Stiles has managed to construct here. Because the alternative is really fucking terrifying - or it would be if Derek wasn’t so stupidly calm about this. Stiles is pretty sure that most people go for fear or anger in the face of something that cannot be explained. 

But not Derek. He’s blatantly gawking at Stiles, but it has nothing to do with fear or anger. 

“Thanks?” Stiles is pretty sure that’s a genuine fucking compliment. 

“I’ve never seen you practice before,” Derek continues. “I’m sorry if you’re not comfortable doing this in front of other people yet. I can make myself scarce if you need to practice indoors.” 

The awkward politeness is weird. Stiles kind of wants grumpy Derek back, the guy who has to set three alarms every morning so he’ll actually make it to his classes on time and complains the whole time. The guy who groans at his sisters’ behavior and rolls his eyes when the book he’s reading mentions something particularly ridiculous. 

Okay, so maybe Stiles has watched Derek a little bit. Or a whole lot. Just to figure him out - not that he’s managed that yet. 

“You know?” Stiles is left asking the dumb questions. 

“Oh,” Derek looks at him funny, and Stiles knows that he probably missed something big. “Yes.” 

It’s like his brain is not working at its usual speed, and it’s not until Stiles starts feeling a little dizzy that he realizes that he’s still holding those damn leaves into the air. He is still feeling a little sluggish when he lets the leaves fall, but his head is starting to clear at least a little. Which is good, because this conversation is getting far too confusing for his tastes. 

“How?” Stiles is on a streak of dumbassery though, so he can’t stop now. 

“You  _ don’t _ know,” Derek responds. 

And that’s just bullshit, because it means that Derek knows something that Stiles doesn’t and he isn’t all that inclined to tell him. He thought that sort of thing was over when he found out about magic being an actual fucking thing this summer. 

Maybe there’s more, though. Maybe there’s more stuff Deaton didn’t tell him before he pulled a vanishing act and Stiles was forced to go back to college without any real fucking answers. 

“Why do you not know?” Now Derek just sounds frustrated. 

Only about half as frustrated as Stiles is right now, so it still doesn’t seem fair. 

For some reason Derek is getting closer to Stiles as well. And yeah, maybe they shouldn’t be screaming about magic in the middle of campus, but something about Derek seems different in a way that makes Stiles hesitant to let Derek get closer to him. It’s fucking weird, because he’s always mostly thought of Derek as a harmless nerd with the grumpiest of attitudes. And now it’s like Stiles feels the need to just… flee. 

“I only found out about this shit over the summer,” Stiles finally just gives up - or gives in. “By accident. No one will tell me anything about anything. It’s a good thing I’m amazing at research, because otherwise I’d never become an Emissary.” 

It’s only because Derek is still getting closer that Stiles can tell exactly how pale he gets when Stiles mentions his future career. Well, that certainly means that there is something else going on here - and that Julia clearly hasn’t been giving him all the facts. Which, yeah, Stiles is not dumb enough to take the word of some rando on the internet as gospel, but everything she’d said had checked out with Stiles’ readings. 

Though maybe Julia didn’t lie to him as much as she left out some key things. 

“What did you just say?” Derek is pretty much on top of the leaves now as well. 

“Emissary,” Stiles enunciates it even more clearly this time. “It’s like, a magical researcher or something? I met this woman online who explained to me that the vet in my hometown was an Emissary. Only he’s a Druid and I’m a Spark, so. Slightly different.” 

He really isn’t as dumb as he sounds right now. It’s just that there is a lot of fictional bullshit to wade through when researching magic, and it’s been a pain in the ass to get anywhere without the helpful tips and links that Julia has been sending him. Stiles knows how to corroborate a story and to check his references, but the information has still been quite one-sided. 

Still more than Deaton’s ever managed to give him, though. 

“Jesus,” Derek huffs. 

“What?” Stiles is not going to let this go until he gets some answers. 

And now that he’s got Derek right here in this convenient pile of leaves, he can just distract Derek with more dumb magic tricks until he tells Stiles exactly what he knows about magic, what information Stiles is missing about Emissaries, and all of the other things that Derek knows that Stiles definitely doesn’t. Sure, it might take them a while and they maybe might miss a class or two, but it is totally going to be worth it. For Stiles, at least. 

“You need to talk to Laura,” Derek seems to think that random statement makes sense. 

It doesn’t make sense, not at all. Not that Stiles isn’t willing to hang out with Laura, because she seems cool albeit super intimidating, and Derek’s never really wanted Stiles and Laura around each other before. They never got past the introduction and awkward acquaintance stage. 

With this new information, Stiles is thinking the avoidance wasn’t because Derek thinks that Stiles is embarrassing. Maybe Derek is the embarrassed one. 

“Why?” Stiles is still resorting to asking the dumb questions. 

“Because I can’t tell you anything without my Alpha’s permission,” Derek follows up his nonsensical statement with another confusing line. “Don’t worry, I think Laura likes you.” 

Alpha? This is starting to sound like some weird porn Stiles totally doesn’t know anything about and shouldn’t ever think about in relation to Derek. Because Stiles is already far too aware that his roommate is kind of ridiculously attractive - from all the staring he’s been doing basically since the very beginning - and he really doesn’t need the help porn can give him. 

Especially since he hasn’t had much privacy lately. 

“You think she likes me?” Stiles is kind of offended. “I’m very likeable.” 

Derek laughs at him. And wow, Stiles is just going to have to take back every nice thing he’s ever thought about Derek. And that’s quite a lot of things. 

* * *

Werewolves. Fucking werewolves. Apparently the major thing both Julia and Deaton had been hiding from him involves the existence of actual werewolves. 

“Do you have any books about it?” Stiles asks Laura, because he’s got his priorities straight. 

“I did not expect that to be the first question you asked,” she answers him, glint in her eye that means the surprise is pleasant. “We have a ton of books but no one’s looked at them since we moved. So they might be really dusty, but they’re all yours.” 

Stiles can handle a little dust. Heck, maybe he can even turn the pages magically and get some actual practice in. It seems like a relatively simple task that he could manage even at his current skill level. Plus, he just really likes research and even though Laura is extremely likeable, he wants to get confirmation in books. About all the things. 

He’s not going to make his dumb Julia mistake a second time. 

“What do you want in return?” Stiles was not born yesterday. 

“For you to consider being our Emissary,” Laura gives up the secrets so easily that Stiles is almost getting whiplash. “We’ve been going without since I became the Alpha, and now that we’ll be here for a while… We need one. I think you’d be a good fit. For all of us. Mostly for Derek, but generally for all of us.” 

The fuck? Stiles does not know which bombshell he needs to respond to first, because he’s still trying to work it all out in his head. Laura is asking him to be the Emissary of their little pack of three - because Emissaries are actually kind of a magical representative tied to a werewolf pack - and she can do that because Laura Hale, who is all of 5’5” in her pink Converse, is actually the leader of this pack. Which is another level of really fucking awesome that Stiles wants to read all the books about - go werewolves for not automatically going for a male leader. 

And then there’s the last bombshell Stiles kind of wants to avoid thinking about. The Stiles being a particularly good fit for Derek thing. Like, what is that even supposed to mean? 

“Laura,” Derek whines in response to his sister’s speech. 

“Der-Bear,” she mock-whines in return. “You’re so obvious that even humans should be able to tell. You can’t make the pining face every time I mention his name and then pretend you don’t want him to be a part of our pack. You’re worse than Cora when that kid Isaac happens to be in the laundry room at the same time. You’re embarrassing.” 

Stiles is starting to get some idea of where this is going and it is kind of incredible and he hopes that Laura will never stop revealing Derek’s embarrassing crushes because this is more than Stiles ever thought he would get. Well, technically he just hopes that this is the only embarrassing crush that Derek has, because it would suck if Stiles wasn’t even special. He certainly thinks that Derek is something special. 

And not just because he’s actually a fucking werewolf. An evolved werewolf, which is better than a normal werewolf in ways that Laura is supposed to explain later. 

“You’re the embarrassing one,” Derek huffs. 

“That’s my prerogative as the eldest,” Laura just steamrolls over him. “And the Alpha.” 

Is this what having a sister is like? Is this what being a part of a wolf pack is like? Because Stiles would like to sign the hell up right now, if stuff like this just keeps happening. He still has very little idea of what being an Emissary to a wolf pack would be like - at least on a day to day basis - but if Laura continues to be hilarious and Derek continues to be himself? Stiles is so in. 

“Pining face?” Stiles is just hoping to get them somewhat back on track here. 

“It’s adorable,” Laura answers before Derek can even get a word out. “Cora and I - well, okay, mostly me because Cora’s too busy falling all over ourselves for the boy at the laundromat - have been trying to find Derek a date for ages now, and he’s never been interested. Since freshman year, he’s been saying that there’s someone he’s interested in. He’s never told us who - and then when I met you…. Well, he didn’t have to tell me anymore. It was that obvious.” 

There is once again just so much that Stiles is having trouble processing. Though he quickly figures out the most important part of the speech. And the most surprising part, too. 

“Freshman year?” 

Seriously, if the bombshells could just stop impeding his intelligence for a bit now. Stiles swears he’s a smart guy, second in his high school class and in the top three percent of his classes even now. It’s just that when he’s hit with something as out there as Derek Hale noticing him back in freshman year - he just turns into a complete idiot. 

Because it’s Derek. Adorable Derek who’s even now wearing a sweater that makes him look huggable (now that he’s shrugged off the leather jacket). Derek who gruffly orders Stiles to turn off his computer and get some fucking sleep, and who has laughed at Stiles’ dumb Star Wars jokes many times, and somehow understands why Stiles would refer to his new friend Erica as Catwoman. Derek who doesn’t hate Stiles after over a month of them living together and being around each other like all the time. Derek who’s dryly funny and incredibly intelligent. 

And gorgeous. But there’s so much more to Derek than that. 

“Yeah,” Derek seems embarrassed, and that’s the last thing Stiles wants. 

“I don’t know why,” Stiles starts, and watches Derek cringe. “But like, dude, I’m certainly not going to look that gift horse in the mouth. Like, you have got to know that you’re kind of amazing and that I’d be lucky to date you. So, you know. Yeah. I’d be up for it.” 

Isn’t this just the right time for him to get tongue-tied for the first time ever? The cute guy of his dreams is saying he’s been into Stiles for over a year and all he can say is that he’d be up for dating him? Seriously, Stiles is the least smooth person in the history of ever. 

Which is saying something, because he grew up with Scott McCall. 

“The romance, I can’t,” Laura is just standing there, mocking them. 

“Look away while you still can,” Derek threatens her with… something. 

And then Derek gets closer - somehow he’s right in front of Stiles in the space of a blink, and Stiles doesn’t even contemplate freaking out when Derek’s hand is gently placed on his waist and Derek leans in close and then stops. He’s waiting for Laura to go away, or for Stiles to make the move that will lead to them kissing. Finally. 

Or at least, it feels like it should be a “finally” moment. Even though Derek’s sister is right there, possibly watching them still. It’s not as much of a deterrent as it probably should be. 

“Oh, gross,” Laura’s exclamation doesn’t really stop them, though. 

“Let’s go back to our room,” Stiles tries to sound normal and not like he just wants to lock the door behind them and not come out until he’s mapped every inch of Derek’s body. 

He probably doesn’t pull it off, but at least he tried. 

“I know we can’t catch anything,” Laura starts and Derek is immediately obviously mortified, “but still, be careful and be safe and all that jazz. And please never get it on in my line of sight again. I think I might be traumatized. I’m definitely going to need ice cream after this.” 

Stiles laughs. And then he takes Derek’s hand and continues to laugh as he drags his sexy werewolf roommate away from his sister’s place and back to their stupid dorm room with the thin walls and the fucking shitty lock on the door. 

Yeah, he’s really won the roommate lottery this year. 


End file.
